"We have countermeasures remaining in inventory."
"I am a fool. If these two have knowledge of us, however slim and imperfect, others do, too. We must evacuate. Give the command."
"Yes, comrade Colonel," said the shaking security chief as he broke a key from a neck chain and inserted it into a panel. He turned it with a harsh twist.
A Maxon blared over and over.
"Come," said Colonel Rushenko, tearing from the room.
Racing deeper into the Shield installation, he returned to his office. The paper-strewn desk stood as it had before, its red light going bap-bap-bap-bap like a spitting thing.
Reaching into a desk drawer, Rushenko found a catch and yanked it. The desk lifted mechanically and rolled aside, disclosing a concrete well and immaculate pine steps going down into shadow.
"What about the others?"
"They have their secret exits," Rushenko hissed. "Or their cyanide pills. Come."
Rushenko led the other into the tunnel, and the desk began returning to its spot, dropping back into place, its shadow overwhelming them.
"Are there no lights?" the security chief complained.
"The tunnel goes in one direction. Just follow my voice."
From behind them came a fierce splintering, joined with the complaint of gears and machinery under terrible stress.
A crack of light appeared back the way they came.
Rushenko turned. The light elongated and began chasing them.
"Hurry!"
They ran. They didn't hear any pursuing footsteps, so when the security chief happened to look back over his shoulder, he was shocked to see a tall man, the blur of his face like a death's-head, just three paces behind.
A thick-wristed hand took him by the back of his neck and dissolved his eyes with a two-fingered blow that penetrated his brain.
Colonel Rushenko heard the ugly death thud and decided against looking back.
It didn't matter. A cool hand arrested him by squeezing the back of his neck. His still-running feet made futile whetting sounds, then stopped.
"I told you I'd be right with you," a cool voice said.
Colonel Rushenko reached for his side arm. He got it out, but it was snatched out of his clutches. He next reached for the cyanide pill in his inner blouse pocket.
A hand clamped his wrist, got the pill and powdered it before his disappointed eyes.
"Nice try," said the taller of the two interlopers. His face was still a blur. It made Rushenko's eyes hurt to look at it.
"What is wrong with your head?" he asked.
"Oh, sorry." And the man shook his head once. Miraculously the features cleared. Deep-set eyes looked at him without mercy.
Colonel Rushenko realized the truth then. The man had been vibrating his head somehow at a speed that defied the human eye and TV cameras to read it. It was wonderful technology, whatever it was.
"How did you know that was a poison pill?" Rushenko asked as the cyanide powder finished dropping from the man's open fist.
"That's where my superior keeps his."
"You are US. agent, obviously?"
"You are head of Shield."
Rushenko quailed inwardly. Shield was known!
"I do not know these Shield. It is an American word," Rushenko insisted.
"Suppose I say Shchit?"
"Then I would tell you you are a vulgar Amerikanski. We say govno. "
The American gave Colonel Rushenko's cervical vertebrae a squeeze, and Rushenko found himself walking backward. His legs were moving involuntarily. No, that was not it. They were moving voluntarily.
But it wasn't of the colonel's own volition. It was the American's.
He was walked back like a puppet up the wooden steps to his ruin of an office. The desk was a shambles. Somehow the bapping light continued to signal its now-useless warning.
"This is the headquarters of Shield," the American said flatly.
"This is Radio Free Moscow. We are Communists."
Then the American began peeling Colonel Rushenko's fingernails off, one by one. He did it with casual cruelty.
"We want to know about the thing that hit our shuttle."
"I know nothing of this!" Colonel Rushenko sobbed, amazed at how swiftly he was reduced to blubbering.
"Kinga told a different story."
At that point, his left thumbnail came off. The false one. Under it was the real one, and under that his Shield tattoo. A tattoo that should have meant nothing to anyone who wasn't a Shield operative.
The other interloper stepped into the room then. Colonel Rushenko saw that he was Asian. His nationality was unclear. Dressed as he was, the man might have been from one of the former Asiatic republics. Remembering Kinga's last report, the colonel felt the saliva in his mouth dry like warm rain on a hot rock.
"You are the Master of Sinanju."
The little old man bowed serenely.
Rushenko addressed Remo. "And you are-what?"